Begbies Traynor Group (LSE: BEG)
68p (67-69)
Market Cap: £74m
Next Results: Interims Wednesday 19th December 2018
Begbies Traynor Group is a long-established business recovery consultancy, with two divisions; financial advisory and property services.
Its interims to October are reported on Wednesday. There is a robust background for its services as activity in the insolvency market has increased.
Government insolvency statistics report a 6% raise in the underlying number of corporate insolvency appointments to 7,915 appointments for the six months to June 2018 compared to 7,462 in the same period of 2017.
There are also an estimated 200 Shopping Centres in trouble and Beg has a role in recycling the assets and clearing the deadwood.
The latest trading statement reported that the current financial year is in-line with market expectations, with revenue growth aided by recent acquisitions. The benefits of ongoing organic investments in the business, which included hiring senior fee earners in both divisions.
This is expected to increase organic growth during the current year. For the full year to April 2019 profits are forecast to increase to £6.4m (adjusted £5.5m) to give EPS of 4.35p for a prospective P/E of 15x while yielding 3.9%.
Financial Strategy
The full year net debt was reduced to £7.5m due to strong cash flow of £9.1m generated. This financial position leaves Beg well placed to continue growth with selective acquisitions.
By Andrew Hore & Jon Levinson
Andrew has been writing about small companies for 25 years, following the fortunes of many companies, both successful and unsuccessful. He worked at the Investors Chronicle for 12 years, ending up as smaller companies editor. He then went on to write AIM Bulletin and he is currently editor of AIM Journal and AimMicro.com. He is a former AIM journalist of the year and was on the shortlist for the journalist of the year at the Small Cap Awards.
Jon has been an analyst, a journalist, a fund manager and is currently a corporate broker. He will strictly never write on corporate clients. His MBA dissertation was on filling the Smaller Companies Equity Gap. When writing the Penny Share Focus he learned that not all that glitters is gold.
